Murakami and Ohtani VIOLENCE!!

Shinjiro Ohtani v Kazunari Murakami (Zero-1, 3/2/01)

Murakami is pretty much a singular entity in the history of wrestling. I know you have people like Ogawa and I guess a smattering of MMA-turned-pro wrestling folk cut from the same cloth, but Murakami has a purely psychotic energy that nobody else quite matches. He's more unpredictable than Ogawa, maybe less imposing than Fujita but certainly more reckless. I've never bought Shibata as being fully deranged whereas Murakami is never anything but. He's menacing just walking from the locker room to the ring and any man with a full and unblemished hairline who chooses to shave his head completely bald is not to be trifled with so there's a sort of uneasy anticipation that spreads through the crowd when he takes his hood off. And then Ohtani storms out and just goes fully at him with zero hesitation. I mean, you kind of need to. The last thing you want to do with Murakami is give him an opening so why not try and shut that door right from the start? Ohtani's running dropkick while Murakami was curled up in the corner was truly brutal and I love how exasperated the ref' was the whole match. He had no chance of keeping a lid on this and if you had even the tiniest hope that he might it was shattered as soon as Murakami stood up sneering. From there it was wild punches and forearms and chaos. Ohtani had two borderline KO sells and both were warranted and actually may not have been selling at all because you know there'll be a point in every match where Murakami conveniently forgets how to work a strike. Ohtani's German suplex wasn't quite desperation but you felt like he needed to do something like that or else he might get steamrolled. Still, this is Murakami and Ohtani didn't take advantage. When Ohtani got knocked loopy that last time and Murakami pounced you kind of knew it was inevitable. If someone like Murakami had to step over you to win he'd tread on your throat just to be sure, or in this instance he'd wrap his arms around it and squeeze. Ohtani's crew jumps into the ring at the end, maybe contemplating whether or not they want that particular fight, while Murakami gives the ref' a kick and lingers a few seconds, completely alone, entirely unfazed, just to see if anybody bites. It turns out nobody wanted that particular fight after all.